The Sesmarias In Brazil:
Colonial Land Policies In The Late Eighteenth-Century
Marcia Maria Menendes Motta
Departament of History – Universidade Federal Fluminense - Brazil
[email protected] or [email protected]
Abstract
This article discusses the reasons for the promulgation of the Alvará of 1795, the
most important of an entire series of decisions by the Crown to legalize the
procedures by which sesmarias were granted. The abovementioned Alvará was the
result of a consultation with the Overseas Council regarding the irregularities and
unruliness which characterized the regulation of sesmarias in Brazil. Revoked the
following year, the Alvará represented the effort of the Crown to stop the process of
illegal land occupation. Its dispositions were object reasoning from D. Rodrigo de
Souza Coutinho and Francisco Mauricio de Souza Coutinho, Para’s governor and
brother of Dom Rodrigo, State Secretary of the Navy and Overseas Dominions.
Francisco de Souza Coutinho interpreted the articles set in the Alvará of 1795, in
an effort to propose solutions to the problems resulting from the concession and
demarcation of land. This article, therefore, analyzes the limits of State action in
relation to land policies in its main colony, Brazil.
Ke ywords
Ancien Regime, Sesmarias, The Alvará Of 1795 Colonial Legislation,
Francisco Mauricio De Souza Coutinho, D. Rodrigo De Souza Coutinho
Introduction
I- The Alvará of 1795: an Emblematic Example of the Mariano
Period
The so-called mariano period in Portuguese history refers, as is well-known, to the
reign of Queen Mary I, from 1777 to 1816, though in fact the Queen ruled only until 1792,
when, prisoner of her own insanity, she was substituted by her son. Recent studies have
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sought to understand the changes which occurred in this period in relation to the Marquis of
Pombal’s government. According to Serrão, the changes made during Queen Mary’s rule
were limited to the rehabilitation of the group of nobles persecuted by Pombal, and could be
epitomized as “the acts of individual reparation that were almost always entreated to recover
the memory of the good name of parents and friends” (Serrão, without date: 295-296).
Further, and against Pombal’s centralization, the government of Queen Mary I can be
characterized as a “collective work, for the solution of problems of general order or for private
long-waiting requests of fair decision.” (idem, p.339).
Concerning the laws and administration of justice, Mary´s reign was marked by the
effort to reorganize the State’s laws, particularly the subsidiary laws, and to formulate a new
code, which was meant the production of a new set of reformulated laws, rather than the
extinguishing of existing ordinances. Thus, during this period, various procedures for the
administration of justice were promulgated, such as the Law of July 19th, 1790, which was
designed to reorganize the Crown’s judiciary districts.
In brief, despite the myth of the Viradeira, the Mariano period clearly exhibits a
level of continuity with regard to the Marquis of Pombal’s policies; in most of her
governmental acts, the Queen held to the principles supported by Pombaline policy. In this
way, the creation of the Royal Academy of Sciences, the retention, and even the elevation of
Pombaline reformers like José Seabra da Silva, demonstrate that we should distinguish, as José
Subtil states, the reform movement from the political actor. In sum, this suggests that
Pombaline principles survived even after Pombal. (Subtil, 1998: 415).
As such, and as a consequence of these principles, there was a strong effort during
Mary’s reign to reform jurisprudence in accordance with the so-called Law of Good Reason
(Lei da Boa Razão). This implied that a new legal code be produced, and signaled a new
approach to the role of the state, beyond the person of the king.
This new approach to the state’s role resulted in several measures centered on the
colonies. The designation of D. Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho as Minister and Secretary of
State of the Navy and Overseas Dominions (Ministro e Secretário de Estado da Marinha e
Domínios Ultramarinos) in 1796 (a position he would hold until 1801) is perhaps the best
evidence of the strong influence of Pombaline principles (Cardoso, 1989:127), even after the
end of the Marquis’s government. Nevertheless, to understand the role of D. Rodrigo and of
his brother Francisco in the political context of the overseas policies, we must analyze, above
all, the Alvará of 1795, whose text sought to regulate the granting of sesmarias1.
1
The sesmaria system was created in Portugal at the end of the fourteenth century. Its goal was to
solve the problem of supplying the country, putting an end to a severe crisis of general food stuffs. The
objective of the legislation was not to prevent land from remaining uncultivated, but rather to impose
the obligation that the soil be utilized. In an effort to understand the peculiar characteristics of the
system, researchers have stressed that, in Brazil, the Portuguese Crown needed to establish a judicial
system capable of securing colonization. The sesmaria system was established in Brazil not to resolve
the question of access to land and its cultivation, as was the thinking in Portugal, but to regularize
colonization. Throughout the text, sesmaria is used to indicate concessions of land under this
Portuguese system and sesmeiro is used to indicate one who holds title to land under such a system.
These terms are used in part for lack of English equivalents.
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First, we must stress the lack of attention given to the Alvará of 1795 by historical
scholarship. The most plausible reason for this may be the fact that the Alvará was revoked
only one year after its promulgation. The Alvará of 1795 was one of the many laws nullified
soon after promulgation, passing quickly into oblivion. However, a more attentive review of
the Alvará of 1795 raises important questions for understanding the efforts, as well as the
limits, of the ancien regime with regards to its land policy, and more specifically, its land
policy in Brazil, Portugal’s most important colony.
Second, the Alvará was doubtlessly, among the many actions attempting to
regularize how sesmarias were conceded, the major act of the Crown in this area; see, for
example, the resolutions of April 11th and August 2nd, 1753. In both instances the Crown
determined that in those cases in which “the lands given in the sesmaria […] [contained]
settlers cultivating the soil and paying rent to the sesmeiros, the former should be considered
as the real cultivators and become the real owners of the respective pieces of land.”
The Alvará, promulgated on May 3rd, 1795, was the product of the Overseas
Council’s deliberations with regard to the irregularities and disorders related to the
administration of sesmarias in Brazil.2 Among the reasons for the Alvará were the occurrence
of several conflicts, conflicts among the sesmeiros, and the lack of any definite legislation that
could establish clear limits for the concession and demarcation of land. This alone reveals
the efforts of the Crown toward regularization in this area. But the Alvará suggested more.
It also expressed the conviction that a true solution for the agrarian conflicts in Brazil would
depend on a royal decision, meaning, a state policy personified by the Queen. This decision
would have to be capable of finding or establishing rational principles for defining the
sesmeiros’ actions. The Queen ordered that the norms established by the Alvará be followed in
order to produce the harmony desired by all. She expressed, by these words, the principles
consecrated by the Law of Good Reason, based on the notion that it was possible to establish
a new rationality for the concession of land through the elaboration of a specific law detailing
the steps to be followed by the subjects. The Alvará thus becomes a detailed project to give
legal patterns to land concession and to re-order the colonial territory. It is certainly a very
ambitious project, revealing the intentions behind state policy at the time, as well as its
limits. Based on those principles, twenty-nine articles are established, and these deserve a
more detailed analysis.
As I have stated in previous research, “unsuccessful in its target and abolished the
following year, the Alvará […] shows how the reality of ownership and the liability of
demarcation and cultivation of the sesmarias played an important role in the conflicts among
the Portuguese Crown, landowners and colonists established in Brazil”, (Motta, 1998). I
now regard the Alvará as more meaningful than I had previously thought, despite the fact
that it was abolished in 1796. It expressed the limits of Crown intervention in the affairs of
colonial subjects, and revealed by this article an official objective of submitting the sesmeiros,
as vassals of the Queen, to the authority of the Crown. Its constitutive logic – related to the
Law of Good Reason – sought to investigate all the questions which involved disputes, in the
belief that a legal determination that organized the territory and was ordered by the Queen
would be sufficient to put an end to, or at least to mitigate, the conflicts fomented by
2
The preamble of the Alvará is reproduced in Portuguese, in its entirety, in Appendix I.
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antiquated concessions, by loose limits, and by multiple forms of land appropriation. The
notion that it was possible to produce a legitimate title of occupation simply by updating a
document, that is to say the Sesmaria Charter, implied a belief that the sesmeiros would be
inclined to consider the demands enunciated by the law, to execute its orders, to accept their
subjection, and as I have already mentioned, to limit their own dominions.
In December of 1796, the Alvará was abolished by decree, motivated by “the
impediments and inconveniences that can possibly result from [its] immediate execution [...] or
because the current circumstances are not the most appropriate for assuring safe establishment of
the vast properties of my vassals in the provinces of Brazil, or by the absence of geometers that can
fix secure measurements [...] or finally, by the many processes and causes that might arise in
attempting to implement such healthy principles […] without previously having prepared
everything that is indispensable for them to have a full and useful application.”
What is most remarkable is that the sesmaria charter was confirmed by the Overseas
Counsel, such as it was established by the Alvará. Nevertheless, it is not so simple to bring
the deepest reasons for the end of this project to light. The summons of D. Rodrigo de
Souza Coutinho to the position of State Secretary of the Navy and Overseas Dominions
exerted an influence on this decision, and revealed more urgent internal problems which
needed to be solved.
II- The Souza Coutinho br others: Perceptions of Power i n the
Overseas Territory
The eighteenth century put “man at the center of the world vision of the mechanism
around which he also organizes his reflection” (Vovelle, 1992:7). Some of them became
protagonists of this new era, “spokesmen of a new discourse,” in a century where
cosmopolitanism, transformation, and the circulation of new ideas became more profound
(Idem, 17). In Portugal, at the end of that century, two “enlightened” individuals sought to
discuss the questions which involved the relationship of the Kingdom with the colonial
territories, and presented proposals, as well as criticism of the actions of the Crown. These
were the brothers D. Rodrigo and D. Francisco de Souza Coutinho. Both addressed
questions relating to the sesmarias.
A complex personality, and object of “different judgments of value”, as Andrée Silva
put it (Silva, 1993:XII), D. Rodrigo was the firstborn son of D. Francisco Inocêncio de
Souza Coutinho, one of the most important members of the Pombaline Administration. The
former was a descendant of one of the oldest noble families in Portugal, and served as
Governor and Captain General of Angola, and as Ambassador to Spain. D. Rodrigo was
born in 1755 and Sebastião José Carvalho e Mello (the Marquis de Pombal) was his
godfather. He studied at the University of Coimbra, reaping the fruits of Pombaline reform
and dedicating himself to several branches of learning. As Ambassador to Turin from 1779 to
1796, he acquired “the knowledge, and above all, the fundamental theories characteristic of
the European Enlightenment, to which he appealed during his long political career” (Idem).
Invited to return to the Court in July of 1796, he was nominated State Secretary of
the Navy and Overseas Dominions. In this position, he sought to apply his knowledge,
gathered in his various years of study and diplomacy, to the defense of a set of “complex,
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ambitious projects of reform and modernization of the Portuguese economy and society, at a
moment of difficulty in terms of finance and diplomacy” (Cardoso, 2001:66).
According to Cardoso, in the first years of his mandate, D. Rodrigo was essentially
dedicated to investigating the complex financial situation of the Portuguese Crown (Idem,
77). D. Rodrigo decided to abolish the Alvará, as an effort of his Ministry to institute a more
substantive policy for Brazil. After all, he was conscious of the impact of the Brazilian
economy and of colonial commerce on the “maintenance of the economic balance of the
kingdom as a whole” (Idem). Advocating “a vision of Empire grounded in two basic
principles: political unity and economic dependency” (Idem), D. Rodrigo attempted to find
more effective means to establish a project of agrarian regularization in the colonies that did
not put at risk the constitutive pillars of the Empire that he defended with such vigor.
Though he wrote little on the sesmarias, certain passages in his writings reveal his
awareness of the problem. In other words, D. Rodrigo was aware of the obstacles that
needed to be overcome, and for which the proposals contained in the Alvará could in turn be
effective.
In his “Memoir on the Betterment of the Dominions of his Majesty in America”,
written in 1797 or 1798, a short time after the the Alvará was abolished, D. Rodrigo
expresses his vision of a political system that “might be adopted with greater convenience by
our Crown for the conservation of its vast dominions, particularly those in America, which
are themselves the base of the greatness of our royal throne” (Coutinho, 1993:43).
In his defense of the kingdom, in the broadest sense of the term, beyond the
territory of Portugal, D. Rodrigo attempts to solve problems that needed to be overcome for
the maintenance of a prosperous Overseas Empire. Central among these was the important
question of the careful choice of governors (remember that his brother was the Governor of
Pará). Since “the distance of these governments [from the capital] requires reliability of
power and jurisdiction, [governors] should remain subject to a great responsibility that binds
their hands” (Idem). The choice of magistrates should also be meticulous, should fix the
limits of their jurisdiction, and should keep them independent in relation to “those who they
judge” (Idem).
Coutinho claimed that the need for a new code was illustrated by the emblematic
example of the sesmarias. D. Rodrigo was grounded, at least in part, in the same arguments
that had been announced by the time of the promulgation of the Alvará, and he defended, by
other means, the same propositions. In one of his letters to D. Fernando José de Portugal,
Governor and Captain General of the Captainship of Bahia, dated October 1st, 17983, D.
Rodrigo affirmed that in Brazil, and principally in its upcountry, “cultivators of the land are
oppressed and agriculture is discouraged by molestations” He was referring to the obligation of
the landowners to surrender their slaves for royal services. In his understanding, the prices
3
D. Rodrigo Coutinho, “Aviso de 1 de Outubro de 1798, pp. 42-44.” This document was also sent
to the Governors of São Paulo, Pará, Maranhão and Pernambuco, in accordance with the original
copy kindly given to me by José Luis Cardoso. The Count of Linhares responded to the document on
December 28th, 1798. Making explicit the problems of the concessions, he writes that the disputes are
endless, and that lands are conceded in sesmarias that have already been given to somebody else.
Historical Overseas Archives. General Documents. Rio de Janeiro [Box 171, Document 104]. The
following citations are taken from this document.
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paid for the goods by the Royal Finance Ministry should be the same current price. Further,
he argued that a more severe law should be enacted to prevent the escape of Afro-Brazilian
slaves to Montevideo. He defended the stimulation of exports of distilled spirits to African
ports, and demonstrated the benefits of establishing a public square in the main Brazilian
cities.
D. Rodrigo talked further about the existence of “a large number of vagrant people,
who leave the country to inhabit the cities, with serious damage to agriculture, and to their own
interests.” He entreated that measures be taken to avoid this injurious situation.
The Secretary also wrote that the news regarding another problem was reaching the
kingdom. In his words, “it is also said that many times in Brazil sesmarias are granted to people
who do not have the means or industry to take advantage of them, and that afterwards they
perpetuate a right that is absolutely not worthwhile to them; on the contrary, this practice impairs
the neighbors of the same sesmarias and the others that have the means and that could receive the
sesmarias.” Once more, D. Rodrigo was referring to the problems stemming from the way
sesmarias were conceded, supporting – at least in part – the logic present in the Alvará of
1795. However, he did not make reference to the Alvará, recommending only that “in this
respect the points so laudably prescribed in our Ordinance should be followed, and it should be
remembered that the Ordinance foresees that the sesmarias, if not immediately cultivated, should
be transferred to the hands of more skillful individuals who have sufficient funds to make the land
profitable.” In other words, D. Rodrigo emphasizes cultivation as the legitimate criterion for
occupation of lands by the sesmeiros.
D. Rodrigo’s brother, Francisco de Sousa Coutinho, was more severe in his
criticisms of the sesmaria system and the Alvará of 1795, which sought – as we saw – to
regularize land appropriation.
The Decree that revoked the Alvará urged that “a notice to the governors of the
captainships of Brazil be sent to inform them about the way they might avoid more easily and
comfortably new questions and processes, and to make it possible for them to put in practice what
is established there and to pick the desired fruit, without having to be submitted to any
inconvenience or a sensible concession.”
D. Francisco de Sousa Coutinho, Governor and Captain General of Pará, was the
only official that responded to the solicitation. In comparison to his brother D. Rodrigo,
there has not been much research undertaken on D. Fransisco. He was a servant of the
kingdom and as such, he attempted to respond to the demands of the State regarding the
control of colonial territories and knowledge of natural resources (Capra, 1992:254). During
his tenure as Governor of Pará, he pleaded with the government for the abolition of the
authority of the Directory of Indians. His proposal was recognized by the royal decree of
May 12th, 1798. He intervened decisively in the discussions about the region’s natural
resources, contributing a great deal of information and observations on the question of
timber extraction. He promoted various expeditions to delimit the boundaries of the
territory of Pará, above all in relation to the captainship of Mato Grosso. He described the
coast and the rivers of Pará, attempting to produce a cartographic description of the area. In
this sense, he can be considered an explorer, in the sense this word gained at the end of the
eighteenth century, when the military and pejorative connotation was eliminated and
replaced by the idea of the explorer as scholar (Noelle Bourguet, 1992:210). On July 26th,
1797 he wrote a letter to the Queen, proposing solutions to the problems resulting from the
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concession of the sesmarias, and in response to the Crown’s order, by the time of the
revocation of the Alvará of 1795.
The text produced by Francisco de Sousa Coutinho is essential in allowing us to
understand a powerful man who was responsible for the governance of one of the
captainships. Thus, in response to the solicitation of the decree that revoked the Alvará of
1795, Francisco de Sousa Coutinho wrote conscientiously, on July 26th, 1797, on the theme
of the sesmarias. His document was titled, “D. Francisco de Sousa Coutinho, Governor and
Captain-General of Pará’s statement, on the measures that should be adopted in order that the
Law of the Sesmarias of October 5th, 1795 might produce the desired effect.”4. In this text,
Francisco extricates all the articles present in the quoted Alvará, suggesting his interpretation
for its failure and his inferences with respect to what was necessary in order to more
appropriately define the law of sesmarias in terms of the conditions of the colony.
First of all, he defends that all the orders related to the sesmarias be put together in a
single document, since he was certain that these orders were too numerous, as well as
unrelated, and, in addition, that many of them could not be found in the records. Even with
the records, “it is not permitted for lawyers or officials to access, or to enter the secretariat of the
governments, the accountings of the councils, or other types of registries.” He recognized that the
gathering of all the laws on the sesmarias would result in a sizable document, though for him,
access to all relevant laws outweighed the potential unwieldiness of the finished product.
The laws should be collected so that “everyone might understand the law so as not to feel
disturbed, or lost, or trapped in the hands of the attorneys, and scholars, so as not to be sacrificed
due to their ignorance, and finally so that the mines, and the establishments they have formed,
should not be forgotten.”
In defense of the principle of cultivation as the validating criterion for the
concession of the sesmarias, Francisco stresses that to put in practice the disposition of the
second article, where, as we know, it is ordained that governors and captains general should
process and regularize the properties, it is necessary to go beyond what is stated. After an
investigation resulting in the loss of land by an unproductive sesmeiro, it is necessary, once
the land is returned, and barring the opposition of a third party, that the lands, as well as
slaves, tools, and other necessary provisions, be individualized in number and in quality.
Being disposed to the task, the chamber should designate the extension of wild
forests, of brushwood, of high and low meadows and fields, as well as define the extension of
each piece of land to be cultivated with specific products, and evaluate the resources
contained in the land.
Francisco Coutinho is reticent about the dispositions related to the demarcations,
and dedicates paragraphs to demonstrating the reasons for his doubts. In the first place, he is
clearly convinced of the difficulty of measuring the land, such as it was described in the fifth
article of the Alvará, even when enacted by the professionals “analogous to the work of this
nature.”
4
“Informação de D. Francisco de Sousa Coutinho, Governador e Capitão-General do Pará. Sobre As
Medidas Que Convinha adoptar-se para que a Lei das Sesmarias de 5 de Outubro de 1795 produzisse
o desejado efeito” 26 de Julho de 1797. Revista IHGB. Tomo 29. Parte 1, 1966, vol. 32: 335-351.
The following citations were taken from this document.
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He is clearly in disagreement regarding the limits of the concessions of the sesmarias
and affirms: “A half of a league squared seems to be an area of two million two hundred and fifty
thousand fathoms squared. A farmer who has about one hundred slaves of various ages and both
sexes and chooses thirty of each sex capable of work, most of which will be able to understand their
clearings in such way to take advantage of them, and that he can give the time needed to reap the
benefit, might cultivate two hundred fathoms in the front with equal measure in the back,
according to what I could gather in this respect, and from what I heard from people who have
confidence in their intelligence, though they still doubted that they can achieve accuracy.” He
continues: “but to do a safe calculation, imagine the double, and consider forty thousand fathoms
squared, eighty [thousand] of which a farmer can cultivate annually; in this way, dividing that
area of two million and two hundred and fifty thousand fathoms squared by this eighty thousand,
the quotient of twenty eight indicates that the farmer subject to the referred circumstances, with
half a league squared of land, will have enough to clear and to work for twenty eight years, even
though he makes two clearings per year, each one with two hundred fathoms in square; if making
only one of this same size, he will have land for fifty-eight years [...].”
His critique of the fact that the sesmeiro received an excessively large area of land
was neither devoid of common sense nor was it abstract. Francisco Coutinho had extensive
knowledge of agriculture and made explicit references to the production of manioc, rice and
sugarcane on lands effectively occupied. As he was aware of the concessions made in other
territories, he was able to make a brief comparison with the Dutch colony of Suriname, “[…]
where the colonists have a maximum concession of five hundred acres of land.”
From this comparison derives Coutinho’s critique of the bases for granting land. In
his understanding, these granted lands should have been the base, from the beginning of
colonization, of a “well-understood economy.” As the Governor of Pará, he had to face the
invasion and destruction of the forests and the disrespect demonstrated by innumerable royal
decisions in this area. For this reason, he was cautious. It was not enough to make a decree,
or even new regulations. To demarcate the lands and preserve the forests, what was necessary
was an “anticipated general recognition of all the rivers, and the lands watered by them, or a
general, more exact, and individual map, which certainly is impossible to design with little time,
and without which all is arbitrary.”
The different forms of appropriation and their corresponding orders were the central
object of article thirteen of the Alvará, which merited deep consideration as to the reasons for
its failure. Francisco Coutinho states in detail that there are very few lands effectively
demarcated and – it is worth saying – if the demarcations were not effected by “intelligent
and adequate people for such tasks, there might be a large alteration, and the discussion about the
legitimacy of titles or of the [lands] conceded by the lord of the province that was his, or by the
government, might endure for centuries[!]”
For residents of such villages as Macapá and Bragança and of the populated islands,
the distribution of lands “was made among them in the same way in which it is practiced in the
kingdom and the islands.” Besides, “all of the indians arranged in settlement villages have their
small farms, not obeying the dispositions of the Directory [of Indians]; and those who live
dispersed, as well as others already mixed, also live by various rivers and districts in the same
conditions; and all of them, by their rusticity and ignorance, deserve particular arrangements
[....].”
There were still many cases, such as that of the Island of Joannes (or the “Ilha de
Marajó”), in which above all an exact plan needed to be made. This would determine the
common public spaces for the herds of the estates, in addition to the wells and shipping of
animals. Further, it was necessary for all the landowners, with or without a title, to make an
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appearance. Then, “by the chronological order of the legal titles each one should be informed, not
of the totality of the lands mentioned in his property document, but of the lands proportional to the
number of heads he possesses, since nobody informed the authorities about how the lands were
obtained, and otherwise all the lands according to the law would be void.” He continued: “after
these landowners, those who hold titles should be similarly identified, along with those who had
titles, or those who had illegal, or false titles, which should then be given all the legitimacy deserved
[…]” In other words, for Francisco it was impossible to implement the same general
procedure in all regions, since in some areas it was impossible to find even one landowner
who had obeyed the royal orders. Some even had illegal or forged titles.
Still, Francisco Coutinho was careful enough in his defense of the demarcation of
lands. He was aware that the process was delayed, costly and needed qualified people to
accomplish the project. For him, without the execution of previous measures, the law only
succeeded in exciting “larger disorders with ordinarily come about without sufficient motive, but
being sufficient enough that someone would want to demarcate [his lands] as soon as the demands
begin, with animosities and hatred then materializing, which have serious consequences.”
To delimit means to impose restrictions on the actions of others, and the Governor
of Pará recognized that this work brought to light the fact that its final result – a properly
executed demarcation – was the fruit of a detailed process attentive to the multiple forms of
occupation. It was neither, thus, a task to be entrusted to auditors or exiles, nor could it be
inserted into judicial ordinances. This is not the case of an isolated property in need of
demarcation, where “there is no doubt that a guide with his compass, and a fathom cord, can
draw a quadrilateral on the ground, and where all four sides are practically equal; though even
then there may be many differences in the way to draw a perfect square that is regularly conceded,
because he does not have the ordinary principles necessary to determine the base from which it
should be measured.” Thus, in this case, the sesmeiro would be told of the extent of his
concession, after which the minister could give him legal possession of the land. Damage
resulting from this measurement would be reduced to a few fathoms of land lost or gained.
The problem was the demarcation of contiguous and expansive lands. In these
cases, “through without bad intentions, the guide cannot avoid committing injustices.” According
to Francisco Coutinho, the task of demarcating these areas required “the help of trigonometry
to improve the geographical delineation of the coast, and the map of the country.” Moreover, it
was necessary for an astronomer to be present, who could rectify “by repetitive astronomic
observations, the exact position of the main points of the same tract of land, and its respective map,
so that geometry could set right and improve the action [of the guide], correcting the imperfection
of his directions, of his instruments, and of his measurements.” He continues, “after which, the
legitimate titles also investigated and the extensions that should be conceded to each sesmeiro being
thus determined, the geometer has to accommodate them on the map, and afterwards competently
divide and mark them on the land.”
One of the consequences of modern rationalism was, without a doubt, the
consecration of mathematics as “a prototype of the unintelligible reality” (Simões,
1991:121). Thus, “by the impulse of mechanization and rationalism, the mathematical
procedures permitted not only the rationalizing the physical nature, but also the formulation
of a prototype of coherent organization of thinking that transforms geometry into an exact
paradigm” (Idem). For Francisco Coutinho, only by utilizing geometric and astronomical
knowledge would it be possible to undertake a true demarcation of colonial lands.
For him, this was the first reason for revoking the Alvará, since without the necessary
provisions it would not be possible “to execute or to understand any demarcation.” Without the
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presence of geometers and astronomers, the most the magistrate could do was to judge the
legitimacy or illegitimacy of titles, that is, “the most appropriate means to avoid the processes
and questions; while the geometers and astronomers entrusted with the demarcations were
measuring and observing, in whatever district they were needed, and with the judge in their
company, involved in the same diligence, called on residents, and obliged them to produce their
titles, verify the legal ones and denounce those that are illegal; however, he has to keep in mind the
establishments that the residents own, and respect them [...]”
Thus, where there was no conflict about property rights, it might be possible to
guarantee to the sesmeiros the extension of their previously demarcated lands. However,
there was an urgency to solve the disputes over lands in areas where poorly made
demarcations produced injustices.
In brief, the Governor of Pará tried to extricate the articles contained in the Alvará
of 1795, in an attempt to propose solutions to the problems originating from the concessions
and demarcations of the sesmarias. In his evaluation, it was clear that – if taken into
consideration – the Alvará did not resolve problems, but might do the opposite, and
aggravate them. Coutinho was aware that the royal apparatus could do little in practice. The
Alvará was a letter of intentions of questionable efficiency, since it ignored, among others
things, the fact that the process of measuring lands was extremely complex, involving various
fields of knowledge that went beyond law. Nevertheless, the question remains: if the
members of the Portuguese Crown shared the same knowledge exhibited by Francisco
Coutinho in the defense of a more substantial project, why does the Alvará seem imprisoned
in a certain vision of intervention, and based on wide presumptions, as well as orders that,
though apparently precise, proved unacceptably inefficient in practice?
III- Sesmarias and the Ancient regim e:
Performance in the Overseas Empire
Internal
Borders
and
The innumerable royal dispositions with respect to the sesmarias and the attempts to
investigate concessions were neither able to inhibit the non-observation of the orders nor
impede that sesmeiros from continuing to illegally occupy lands, which in turn required
demarcation and cultivation.
The laws that dealt with these subjects were very old. At the end of the seventeenth
century, the Crown attempted to fix the maximum extension of areas that were being
conceded by the sesmaria. Also, by this time royal orders, such as the Royal Decree of 1695,
were published which reiterated the idea of obligatory cultivation. Even so, the laws were
not executed, and conflicts and demands became recurrent phenomena, in direct proportion
to the density of occupation and the fertility of the soil.
In a previous work, I claimed that the Crown was preoccupied with at least three
complex and interlinked problems. The first was that the implantation of a judicial
institution, created to promote cultivation, be used to guarantee colonization. In the colonial
lands, the main question was not limited to the necessity of exploiting the lands, but
fundamentally implied that these lands be occupied and profited from, defining them as
colonies. Moreover, the obligation and the incentive to cultivate stimulated the growth of
social categories, different from that of the sesmeiros. Finally, the incapacity of the Crown to
effectively control the execution of its demands stimulated the growth of the figure of the
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possessor, i.e., one who takes possession of lands that are allegedly or truly unoccupied
(Motta, 1998).
However, at the time I wrote this work, I wasn’t completely aware of what it meant
that the Crown was unable to solve the problems stemming from the sesmarias. Today, the
question that I ask myself is: was the incapacity structural or not? What does this incapacity
reveal if we look at the way in which the system for occupying lands was instituted?
The logic behind the Alvará and the considerations of Francisco de Sousa Coutinho
are the keys to the answer. To concede lands by the system of the sesmaria was, above all, a
political concession and not a territorial one. The concession, by expressing the power of he
who concedes – in this case, the Crown – implied the submission of those who received the
concession, in the belief of a State based on the hierarchy of society as a whole. If the State
was, so to speak, the agent of harmony and justice, this does not mean that its agents could
solve the conflicts arising from the occupation of land, since the conflicts were structural. In
other words, because the conflicts were reported through petitions to the crown, the
sesmeiros could recurrently appeal to the Crown to solve demands between confronting
parties or among sesmeiros using the documents relative to the same territorial space. The
governors donated the lands, which were subsequently confirmed by the Overseas Counsel
(Conselho Ultramarino), but the donation did not represent an accurate geographical
measure.
It became more and more obvious that the sesmeiros resisted royal orders. But the
Alvará – as a unique moment in the Crown’s effort to constitute new regulations – brought
to light the conflict that needed to be hidden because it was followed by discord, hatred and
rancor among sesmeiros, and between many sesmeiros and the Crown. It was preferable then
that the solutions to the conflicts be sought in the judicial system, in individual judicial
demands, where the political strength of some guaranteed their possession of lands, to the
detriment of others.
But then why didn’t the Crown design a new system of occupation, more adequate
to colonial conditions, and paying attention to the considerations of Francisco de Souza
Coutinho’s text?
The sesmaria was the instrument of colonization, and in this sense, an instrument of
power. But the relation between boundaries – internal and external – and power is not so
simple. Every authority is predisposed to circumvent his power in a territorial space. This
circumscription reinforces authority, but also limits it. The colonial Portuguese Empire was
constituted by the conquest of colonial spaces, supposedly unoccupied. If, as Jean Pierre
Raison affirms, political power can establish its strength in diverse ways when it defines
internal limits (Raison, 1986), it is true that not establishing precise internal limits among
landowners can strengthen this same power, principally when we consider that the accuracy
of limits was not enunciated in practice, and confirmation of concessions occurred on the
other side of the Atlantic, in the Overseas Counsel. For this reason, the Crown manifested
its capacity for mediation, exactly because it could not bring to light the conflicts originating
from the way land was conceded.
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